Hey Presto, Not!

One of my tasks for yesterday morning was to choose the border for a quilt. I put most of the quilt together in a flurry of activity a couple of days ago. I wanted to get the blocks pieced and sashed to show my Patchwork by Machine class. Only I didn't start until after lunch on the day of the class--let's just say I had to stay focussed to get in done.

OK, I have the main part of a quilt top done--now to choose the border. The main fabric is a purple floral print with pretty little buds and leaves. I bought a selection of related fabrics in the one shopping trip. There are lots of obvious colour choices, but none of them looks right when I try it against what I've got. I spent some time going through my fabric collection and some time consulting. Then I went back to the store where I bought the original fabrics. There were several more fabrics in that range on special, they came home with me--oops. And I bought a plain bottle green homespun thinking it would do for the border. When I tried it again last night, I wasn't convinced. It was OK, but plain boring.

At this stage I think I know what colour I want, but none of the fabrics I have are quite it. And I'm reluctant to buy any more fabric just now. Plan B--or is it Plan C?--alter one of the fabrics I have already. I started by bleaching back the bottle green homespun. I wet it, scrunched it in a basin and sprayed it with bleach. Then I rinsed it thoroughly and hung it to dry. This is what I found this morning. It's certainly not boring any more, but it's not quite what I want. I'm going to try overdyeing it with a different green. The bleach has given me some room to move as there was no way any colour was going to make an impact on the original dark green. I've got another couple of fabrics that can go in the same batch. They're all different versions of greens, so they will all come out differently. Hopefully by Monday I'll be ready for another batch of border auditions.